WGA Extends Member Health Coverage, Says Writers Must Help & Support SAG

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1. Now if we can get SAG to do the same for health care and “stop the clock” for the last 3 months, maybe a lot of us wouldn’t be so screwed.

   SAG,…….. help?

   Peggy Lane O’Rourke

   Comment by Peggy Lane O'Rourke — February 26, 2008 @ 11:38 pm

2. Too bad the WGA strike took SAG’s leverage away. If WGA wanted to support SAG, they would have waited to strike.

   Comment by Too bad — February 27, 2008 @ 6:14 am

3. IATSE, too?
   Meg, a grip’s wife

   Comment by Meg — February 27, 2008 @ 7:15 am

4. WGA Leaders - thank you!!!

   And to Patric Verrone, who took numerous character assassination bullets, standing ovation to you for maintaining your integrity.

   I worked with Patric a few years back and I found him to be one of the most honest, level-headed and highly principled people I’ve ever met in this business. So I feel especially grateful that we had a leader like Patric to take those hits for all of us. Huge thank you to you, Patric!

   Comment by Thanks! — February 27, 2008 @ 8:02 am

5. What delusional nonsense. This is a terrible deal. After months of talking tough, and telling us that we were all in this together, that we would strike for “As Long As It Takes” to achieve the right deal, our leadership got spooked and recommended a laughably wrongheaded contract. It is a COMPLETE surrender. It does nothing–literally not one thing–to improve even marginally the scandalously unfair DVD rate; it allows a 17-day streaming window that will wipe out meaningful residuals immediately and eventually gut our pension and health; it adds the carbuncle of an additional three months to the contract term, so that we now have a three-year plus three-month deal, solely to protect the studios from another strike that would imperil pilot season and the 2011 Oscars–and in return for sacrificing this leverage, we got (you guessed it)….NOTHING! Even the much-touted “distributor’s gross” amounts to no such thing if you study the actual language in its entirety, something that voting guild members were unable to do because even as late as the Shrine meeting, we were getting only contract “summaries” from our leaders. (I intend to see if the NLRB has a problem with that; I sure as shit do.) Patric Verrone and his college buddy John Bowman talked big, but at the end of the day they were all hat and no cattle. We will look back on this settlement as perhaps the sorriest moment in the history of the WGA–because we had leverage and we squandered it. It will be decades at least before we get such an opportunity again.

   Comment by SngWithMyUnionticki — February 27, 2008 @ 8:57 am

6. Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot to mention in my post above: Our porcelain-jawed leaders at the WGA also failed to secure us Most Favored Nation status with SAG….D’oh!….which means that, contrary to the blather and spin in the WGA press release above, “further gains that they [SAG] can achieve” will absolutely NOT “have an immediate, positive effect on our contract.” Surely our leaders aren’t dopes, right? So it must be that they think WE are.

   Comment by StickingWithMyUnion — February 27, 2008 @ 9:08 am

7. @StickingWithMyUnion

   Wow, what an articulate and seemingly accurate post

   As future members of wga [currently film students], what explains this squandered opportunity? The only plausible explanation seems to be heavy handed pressure from the “Dirty 30.”

   Comment by Future — February 27, 2008 @ 2:23 pm

8. Whatever one thinks about the deal, it’s pretty clear the health care issue has been settled in a way that offers even more help to affected writers than we had been led to expect. Namely that a lot of writers with “points” won’t have to use them, and that help will be offered to any writer whose eligibility period included the strike period. That is a very, very good thing the leadership and the AMPTP have done.

   Comment by Ashley Gable — February 27, 2008 @ 4:08 pm

9. Hey StickingWithMyUnion,

   Why dont you stick with your union. You know the one that voted by a 93% margin of people who cared to vote that ratified the contract. You didnt have alot of time to study the contract before the shrine meeting sure. So what, that was just a photo op for your leaders to look good. You had 72 hours after that to decide whether or not to call off the strike, at that time 95% of the members that cared to vote decided to do so. Then after that you had 2 weeks to decide whether or not to ratify the contract. Obviously you are in the minority of the union you claim to stick with. Monday morning quarterbacking will not do any good nor will whining to the NLRB when the majority of the membership that cared enough to vote ratified the contract.

   Comment by Steve — February 27, 2008 @ 8:06 pm

10. Hey Steve–

    If the majority of my union is doing something that I consider ill-advised and self destructive, are you saying that I should just shut up? You got your lame-ass contract ratified, why should it unnerve you so much that a loser like me just wants to tell the truth as I see it?

    This is a shitty deal.

    And if your beef with me is that the parade is over and I should just go home, then tell that to the WGA leaders whose crowing about what a terrific contract this is (in the press release above) triggered my dissent.

    This is a shitty deal.

    Did you see the film students who read my post and asked about it? They describe themselves as future WGA members. Maybe they’re just Fabiani and Lehane, having sport with me. But I think not. I think they’re who they say they are. And if so, I’m thrilled….and that’s why I won’t let this go, my friend. Because the next generation of guild leaders needs to know that, regardless of the mass hysteria in favor of this deal (not unlike the mass hysteria in favor of, say, invading Iraq), the dissenters got it right this time.

    This is a shitty deal.

    Never again.

    Comment by StickingWithMyUnion — February 27, 2008 @ 8:37 pm

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